Sorting of refuse into various categories, such as clear and colored glass, metals, plastics, etc., not only is recognized as an environmentally commendable practice but is fast becoming a legal mandate in many areas. It has resulted in a proliferation of new devices for facilitating the refuse sorting process particularly in residential households. Various multiple compartment refuse containers have been proposed, such as those in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,834,262 and 4,834,253 and earlier in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,615, and simpler forms presumably not patented are commercially available. All have one aspect in common and that is that they present multiple refuse-receiving compartments to the user which are of fixed size.
The types of refuse requiring sorting, however, are not generated in equal amounts. One household may produce several times the volume of colored glass bottles as it does aluminum cans. Another may generate waste plastic in only a fraction of the volume of clear glass refuse. Prior art multiple compartment refuse containers occupy a total space in which one compartment may be totally filled with cans while next to it another compartment of equal size is inefficiently filled only to a fraction of its capacity with plastic bottles.
It is the principal object of this invention to provide refuse bag holding means of a total volume which is substantially less than the total volume of the bags if all were filled to capacity. Put another way it is the purpose of the invention to reduce the size of a multiple compartment refuse container as much as possible such that bags holding refuse of large volume can expand as needed at the expense of bags which need only minimal space to receive refuse generated in lesser volume.